2024 is the year we made history T Mayor Micky...

he last time I wrote for GNI Mag in 2022 I hadn’t long taken up my role as a new Belfast City Councillor, representing the Balmoral ward in South Belfast, just two short years later and we’ve made history when I was elected as the newest Lord Mayor of Belfast, marking the first time in it’s 130+ year history in which an openly-LGBTQ+ person has held the position.

I say “we’ve made history” because, while it’s me in the position, I feel like this is a win for our entire community, both the LGBTQ+ community and the wider community.

On Monday 3rd June, the night I was being installed as the new Lord Mayor more and more people kept arriving at Belfast City Hall, my friends and family, but also others from our community who wanted to come along and witness this historic event. They had to start turning people away from the public gallery because of health and safety reasons. When I put on the chain and took the chair there was this almighty cheer from right across the chamber and the public gallery, and I didn’t realise it at the time, but from outside the chamber also.

Paula Bradshaw posted on Facebook, and I think this sums it up pretty well. “I was aware of the significance of his appointment, but I had not fully appreciated just how much it meant to so many people until I heard the cheers from outside City Hall when he took the Lord Mayor’s chair.”.

LGBTQ+ people, BME people, women, political institutions weren’t built for us, they were built to represent the select few. Being a gay politician isn’t my entire identity, but others made our identity their entire politics, and that’s why it’s so important that we’re represented in institutions that we were never meant to be represented in. That doesn’t just mean politics, it means leadership roles, heads of companies, educators, solicitors, any number of professions.

Every Lord Mayor brings something different and personal to the role, when my party colleague Kate Nicholl was Lord Mayor she focused a lot on ethnic minorities and newcomer families, which is a huge priority for her and something she’s incredibly passionate about, and while there will of course be the corporate plans for Belfast City Council, including inward investment, hosting international visitors, and representing the Council on all things from launching our new sponsoring partnership for Belfast Bikes to speaking at local business conferences, I too wish to bring some of my own things to the role.

I have pretty ambitious plans for the year ahead and as the city’s first openly gay Lord Mayor, I want Belfast to be a place where everyone feels welcomed and included.

A more inclusive, diverse and kinder city makes it better for everyone. I’m looking forward to meeting with groups and organisations city-wide who are working to achieve these goals and to using my time as Lord Mayor to highlight their work and showcase all that is good within our city.

My background before politics was in the voluntary and community sector, supporting those impacted by long-term homelessness and addictions, and this is an area I’m really passionate about and want to use this role to shine a spotlight on.

Where I think I can make the biggest difference is making Belfast a more inclusive place to live, work, and spend time. I’ve made myself available to the LGBTQ+ sector, including those well established organisations such as The Rainbow Project and HEReNI, but also organisations like Sporting Pride who are doing some amazing work promoting LGBTQ+ inclusive sports, Another World Belfast, who are incredible in addressing inequalities, promoting inclusion, and creating space for those who often go ignored, I can’t do justice to just how incredible this organisation is.

As I write this, it’s my first week in office, I’ve only been elected for two days and I find myself in New York City attending the New York New Belfast conference, a conference with a focus on inward investment into our city. I’ve met with some incredible people who have been championing our city here in the US and promoting the opportunities, talent, and advantages of doing business in Belfast. One thing which has repeatedly come up is our people, and how resilient and hard working we are, it’s hard not to be extremely proud of Belfast when you’re sitting in a meeting with a tech company which was founded, and is still based, in Belfast and have expanded globally, leading change in their sector, and the average age in the room is 28.

Today has been so very surreal for me, when I found out I would be in New York City during Pride month I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and go to visit the LGBT Centre here, who are facing a lot of the same funding struggles as our sector our in Northern Ireland.

When the announcement went out that I would be taking up this role I had hundreds of messages of support from people I spend my life with, people who I haven’t seen since primary school, and people I’ve never even met, followed by a tsunami of online trolling and abuse, something which those of us involved in public and political life have sadly just had to expect at every turn. I was feeling really quite anxious about it all, everyone tells you not to read the comments but it’s almost impossible when your phone is blowing up with notifications and you’re aware that people are making horrible and libellous comments about you online.

It was during this tsunami of homophobic abuse when I got an email from a man named Danny Dromm. Danny is a former New York City Council Member, representing the 25th district from 2010 to 2021. Danny began his career as a public school teacher in 1984 and was key in promoting teaching acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals through the ‘Rainbow Curriculum’. Danny came out publicly in 1992, the year I was born, and went on to serve as the chairperson of the Finance Committee for New York City.

Midweek, tired and drained from a mixture of emotions the email from Danny was an invitation to a reception he had arranged for me in none other than the Stonewall Inn. I remember having a wee celebratory cry and re-reading the email over and over again. This was particularly symbolic, as it would be my first official engagement as the newly elected Lord Mayor of Belfast.

When I arrived at the Stonewall Inn I walked in to, again, another cheer, and this proved to me that it wasn’t about me, it was about the significance of what me in this office represents, change.

To arrange an event like this for someone is an incredibly kind gesture to make, but even more so when I walked into that room and seen the calibre of people who came to congratulate me, heads of organisations, the NYC Controller, Council Members, and form

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Email - mickymurray@belfastcity.gov.uk